Give-and-Take on Dealing With Panhandlers

I live, work and shop in downtown Ventura, which means that by now I should have worked out what my response is going to be when someone asks, “Got any spare change?”

To the contrary. Each time I’m asked (which is often, although I hope it doesn’t sound like bragging) it’s as though it’s the first.

Oh, my! Should I? Will it help or hinder this person’s self-reliance/self-esteem/sense of deferred gratification?

Even before someone pops the question (and you can usually sense these things ahead of time), I launch into the same old tortured monologue with myself that combines popular philosophical beliefs of the day, current sociological theory, Pavlov’s conditioned-reflex hypothesis--plus the opinion of the last person I talked to.

While I’m wavering about whether to fork over a couple of quarters, there is frequently enough time to think up a homily or two, such as, “There but for the grace of God,” or maybe walking a mile in someone else’s moccasins.

If it’s been a rough day, a more astringent homily might come to mind about bootstraps and the Lord helping those who help themselves.

Of course, you have to think fast to fit all that vacillation into three seconds. I doubt it’s a pretty sight. Once a panhandler offered me the quarter someone else had just handed him.

Everyone else I know has a firm position on whether to give or not to give. They don’t question themselves.

“Nope, it’s begging,” said a middle-aged man I know. “I’ve done some of the most chicken-stuff jobs in the world, including shoveling it. My response to them is ‘Get a job.’ ” Then he added that if he saw an old woman who looked particularly down and out, he would offer her money without being asked.

Another friend, a young woman, said she “almost” never gives. “But when I do, it might be a $20 bill. If something really touches me.”

The late columnist Mike Royko once said he never set foot on a street in Chicago without a roll of $1 bills to hand out on request. No coins for him, he said. He figured it was hard enough for someone to ask.

Opinions on how to handle requests for money range from disgust to “I give to charities that help those people” to acts of compassion I didn’t think existed anymore.

I’ve watched my husband handle such requests. Sometimes they’re 16-year-old boys who ask for a dollar. The decision of whether to part with his pocket change doesn’t even qualify as a decision with him. He answers “No.” Not “Sorry,” just “No.”

“There’s no such thing as spare change. It’s an oxymoron,” he told me.

“That’s cold,” I said. “You can’t take it with you. ‘Tis easier to thread a rich man through the eye of a needle than for a camel to get into heaven.”

“A penny saved is a penny earned,” he shot back.

Of course, my husband doesn’t spend nearly as much time as I and the panhandlers do around the secondhand stores on West Main Street, which sometimes have really cute pullovers.

My position--and I do have one--on whether to spare some change is, I suppose, the same as it is on art: I don’t know what it is but I know when I’m reaching into my Guess bag.

Now, men can hand over pocket change without breaking stride, which I envy. It’s harder when you are carrying a purse. More than once, I’ve said, “Just a second, I know there’s a quarter in here somewhere,” while fishing around in the nether regions of my bag.

Occasionally, social programs are mounted with the goal of cutting down on the need to ask for money on Main Street in Ventura, or wherever. I expect they are all somewhat effective. No one will ever stop it completely.

I just remembered--I do have one hard and fast rule in response to requests for spare change: Never give money to someone on a skateboard.